I’m going to whisper this because what I’m about to announce is by no means a fashionable opinion.
I’ve been quite enjoying this lockdown.
That’s not to say it hasn’t been hair-whiteningly challenging with two kids belaying up the walls and palpitations about my income, or that I have zero sympathy for the massive number of unnecessary* deaths my country’s suffering, but my writing is in somewhat ruder condition than it’s been for some time.
Yeah, I know. Me me me.
But, look, my mental wellbeing and my literary (for want of a better word) ambitions have always been inextricably commingled. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it is. Finding a route to traditional publication has taken some of the monkeys off my back, it’s true, but there’s still one there, smashing bananas into its perma-terrified grin and hanging off my neck with its prehensile tail, and it probably won’t ever leave. The thing is, I’ve found a routine again, thanks to the lockdown, which allows me to write every day. And if a writer’s writing, that’s success. I try not to think about the smoking ruin of the publication industry, the shuttered-up bookshops or the inevitable financial depression that’s coming because that’s all out of my control. But what I produce on my laptop isn’t.
I’ve written before about stealing time to write, as opposed to merely finding it, and I feel as though the coronavirus has committed offshore banking-level larceny on my behalf. My sleeping patterns are a mess (I've been up since four this morning) but the lack of a commute alone means I have more time for beachside walks, reading and penning my thousand words a day.
But it hasn’t all been plain sailing.
Two weeks ago, I happened across the synopsis of a debut novel by a fairly well-known British celebrity who, for sake of anonymity, and because I don’t want to give them free press on account of me being an utter bastard, I will call Malcolm. The blurb was wholly identical to a thus-far unpublished book I completed years ago. Now, I don’t want to make light of people who do actually throw themselves into volcanoes but if there had been one to hand (there used to be; we fled Naples in the new year) I would have hurled myself into it head-first. In the cold light of day, and once my agent talked me down from the kerb, I came to realise that, beyond the main premise, the two books probably contain very little by way of similarity, but it’s still galling that a form of that story was no doubt knocking around on my desktop before Malcolm put finger to keyboard (although, that's not so say it hasn't taken poor Malcolm years of toil [unless it was ghostwritten - another possibility; my hatred of celebrities using ghostwriters will probably be a sweary blogpost at some point], and, irrespective of the flurry of press articles he managed to ejaculate around the time of World Book Day, Malcolm must be gutted his book's on sale at a time when Waterstones is bolted shut and its window displays yellowing). I’m not going to go into the reasons why my book hasn’t been published yet while Malcolm no doubt received an advance higher than the nation’s student loan debt, but his route to publication can’t have been hurt by his post-Cambridge network and over fifteen years in the public eye. However I scatter them, I can’t help but read nepotism in the runes.
But, the thing is, that’s the deal (the competition, not the ‘old school tie’ exactly). Examples of authors plagiarising the works of others are rare (though Jacob Epstein did steal from Martin Amis and admitted as such) but examples of ‘simultaneous discovery’ happen all the time in the arts. Films, perhaps most notably, are often in production that bear striking similarities to one another (we hear about these at an early stage, unlike the writings of authors which are generally kept close to the chest). There are only so many permutations of story, and fiction will always beget fiction. The bigger concern for writers, let’s be honest, is that the financial return on the hours you invest is rarely going to stack up favourably. Your book sales will be humiliating when you compare them to Stephen King’s. Winning the lottery or pulling off a successful bank heist is a far, far better strategy for making money, simply because everyone and their dog is also trying to write a novel, making the competition fiercer than an Italian without Nutella.
If it sounds like I’ve skiied off-piste with this, it’s because I have. So let’s slalom matters back to the blue run with a neat concluding paragraph in the manner of the hack I aspire to be.
I wish some idiot had never eaten an infected bat and gifted the world COVID-19, but I’m grateful, in a selfish and macabre way, that I get to spend more time with my family and my own somewhat ugly ambitions. I don’t always enjoy writing, per se, and still procrastinate to the point where I get so angry with myself that I have no choice but to get on with it, but I’m happiest when I know I’ve achieved something in terms of that writing (even if it's sometimes just a half-decent sentence or a quarterly royalty statement with a sale on it). Every writer is. But if I find out, in a few years’ time, that someone has beaten me to the finish again, then I won’t be held responsible for the atomic levels of Anglo-Saxon and self-deprecation in a future blog post. You have been warned, Malcolm.
* I say ‘unnecessary’ because the same Tory clowns behind Brexit have managed to, unthinkably, engineer an even stinkier shitstorm. This isn’t a political blog so these rants will be asterisked** should you care to ignore them.
**This blog uses footnotes. And that’s the kind of revolutionary blogging that will keep you coming back for more, isn't it?
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